Words of Redemption

“Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?”

- Romans 7:24

Faith is a vehicle for my own personal satisfaction and happiness.

When I reflect upon how I spend my days and the attitudes I carry from one activity to the next, my thoughts usually revolve around:

My mood.

My feelings.

My benefit.

My reward.

My happiness.

Basically, it’s all about me. My faith is about God’s interest in my freedom and my joy and my peace and relief from my struggles, my discomfort and my pain. And in smiting all of my enemies.

“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

- Anne Lamott

Yup. God’s on my side. He supports my causes and what I believe in. He fights my fights and supports the politicians I support.

Very, very backwards. And yet I live my days as if this is my faith.

This is level four of five, as David Gregory puts it in The Next level, for which I posted a review the other day. L.L. Barkat, a fellow blogger and writer (who also has the gift of encouragement IMO, which I¹ appreciate) posted a comment and asked:

“…did you have a sense of what “level” you’re on… and what does that mean… and what are the implications of that?”

It’s a great question. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I considered writing about the answers to those questions as a part of my original review. But instead, I glossed over them with vagaries and hoped none would notice.

Blast you, L.L., for trying to add more depth and transparency to this blog!

As I’ve already said, my sense is that I mostly live on level four, with brief jaunts to level five, though I suspect no one there recognizes me. The security guards give me long looks as they move their hands to belt holsters when I step off the elevator.

The funny thing, and the reason why I think David’s book has a subversive undertone easily missed, is that level four would look like real faith in about 90% of modern churches. Without going into specifics, I’ll say that level four in the book reminded me of both church camp and every mega-church I’ve ever attended. It’s hard to really express this without you reading the book, but if you can move beyond the minor campiness that creeps into the book at times², you’ll see David joining the voices of Shane Claiborne, Rob Bell, David Fitch, Brian McLaren and many others in his attitude about the modern church.

And that is: It’s all about me.

So, first question answered: I’m on level four.

And I think I’ve answered what level four means, at least from where I sit.

As for the implications, well that’s a post of its own.

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

- Romans 7:25 - 8:1

Until next time.

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1. me again [↩]
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